Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Okay, fans, I had a neurology consult (granted, I don't get many other kinds) at the hospital this morning, on a 16 year old guy who began acting weird around 1:00 a.m. last night.

The following is, I swear, what the admitting hospitalist's note said:

"Impression: Patient who took LSD around midnight, and is now brought in for bizarre behavior and hallucinations. We will consult neurology to determine cause of altered mentation, check MRI, EEG, and labs. May need spinal tap to rule-out meningitis."

Oh dear, how very worrying (but unfortunately not that surprising). This doc obviously didn't get out much during med school.

Re the MRI scanner freaking the patient out - when I did Neurology as a junior doc, I had a frankly psychotic guy (turned out to have ADEM) whom we tried to put through an MRI scanner - he (unsurprisingly) wouldn't lie still. The (male) radiographer came on over the intercom saying, 'Stephen, please lie still, calm down...' etc). Stephen stopped thrashing about and lay very still. 'Is that God??!' he asked. The radiographer came back over the intercom. 'Yes Stephen, this is God. And I want you to lie very still for me.'

Great story, Layla! I tend to go with the flow with dementia pts & the crazy things they see. Plenty of spiders, bombs, & pencils (disguised as heplocks) -- never get the fun hallucinations.

Grumpy - that hospitalist could have been our Dr. Snippy. She has book knowledge, but application is a very real problem. Consequently, they put her on nights - she could never manage to stay on track for days.

I'm going back and reading your archive so I'm tardy to the party. The first comment reminds me of an ER doc I work with. I honestly think he has started to do blood gasses on any patient that comes in frequently with nothing wrong with them. "Oh you're short of breath while you are having a conversation with me with ease and your finger O2 sensor says 98? Let's jab you in the artery with a needle just to check"

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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